Vedic Roots of Ancient America

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i n d i a a c r o s s p a c i f i c w a v e s ?

 

Baffling Links to Ancient India: History is full of misnomers; one

such term is the New World, as applied to the Americas. The landing

of Columbus in 1492 undoubtedly created a new life on the continents,

but it neither created nor discovered a new world. Many centuries ago

Asian migrants had come to the western shore in substantial numbers.

What if the popular idea that Tibetans and American Indians have much

in common in terms of their spiritual culture is largely a result of

another historical scenario?

What if Hindus and Hopis, Advantins and Aztecs, Tibetan Monks and

Mayans were part of one world culture - a spiritual one?

 

Baron Alexander von Humbolt (1769-1859), an eminent European scholar

and anthropologist, was one of the first to postulate the Asiatic

origin of the Indian civilizations of the Americas.

Swami B.V. Tripurari asks, " What mysterious psychological law would

have caused Asians, and Americans to both use the umbrella as a sign

of royalty, to invent the same games, imagine similar cosmologies,

and attribute the same colors to the different directions?"

 

 

 

 

The first Maya Empire had been founded in Guatemala at about the

beginning of the Christian era. Before the fall of Rome the Mayas

were charting accurately the synodical revolutions of Venus, and

whilst Europe was still lingering in the Dark Ages the Maya

civilization had reached a peak of greatness.

 

It is significant that the zenith of Maya civilization was reached at

a time when India had also attained an unparalleled cultural peak

during the Gupta period, and Indian cultural intercourse with

Southeast Asia, the Gupta period had begun more than a century before

the Mayan classical age in 320 and Buddhism and Hinduism had been

well known in neighboring countries for centuries. If there was

contact between Mayan America and Indianized Southeast Asia, the

simultaneous cultural advance would not appear surprising. In marked

contrast, this was the darkest period in Europe's history between the

sack of Rome and the rise of Charlemagne.

 

The most important development of the ancient American or

Asiomerican culture took place in the south of the United States, in

Mexico, in central America, and in Peru. The early history of

Asiomericans is shrouded in mystery and controversy due to the

absence of definitive documentary evidence, which was destroyed by

the European conquerors in their misguided religious zeal.

 

However, it appears that after the discovery of introduction of maize

into Mexico, Asiomericans no longer had to wander about in search of

food. Men in America, as in other parts of the world, settled down to

cultivate food and culture, a by-product of agricultural life,

inevitably followed.

 

Of the Asiomerican civilizations, the best known are the Maya, the

Toltec, the Aztec, and the Inca. The Mayas were possibly the earliest

people to found a civilization there; they moved form the Mexican

plateau into Gauatemala. They were later pushed out, presumably by

the Toltecs, who, in turn were dislodged by the Aztecs.

 

Similarities:

Astrology

 

Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, whilst visiting Mexico, found

similarities between Asian and Mexican astrology. He found that the

systematic study of ancient American cultures and was convinced of

the Asian origin of the American-Indian high civilization. He said,:

 

"if languages supply but feeble evidence of ancient communication

between the two worlds, their communication is fully poved by the

cosmogonies, the monuments, the hieroglyphical characters and the

institutions of the people of America and Asia."

 

In 1866, the French architect, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, also noted

striking resemblances between ancient Mexican structures and those of

South India.

 

Hindu-Mexican Trinity:

 

Scholars were also greatly impressed by the similarity between the

Hindu Trinity - Brahma-Visnu-Shiva and the Mexican Trinity - Ho-

Huizilopochtli-Tlaloc-as well as the likeness between Indian temples

and American pyramids. The parallels between the Hindu Brahma-Vishnu-

Shiva Trinity and the Mexican Ho-Huitzilopochtli-Tlaloc Trinity, and

the resemblances between the attributes of certain Hindu deities and

those of the Mayan pantheon are impressive. Discussing the diffusion

of Indian religions to Mexico, a recent scholar, Paul Kirchhoff, has

even suggested that it is not simply a question of miscellaneous

influences wandering from one country to the other, but that China,

India, Java, and Mexico actually share a common system."

 

Kirchhoff has sought "to demonstrate that a calendaric classification

of 28 Hindu gods and their animals into twelve groups, subdivided

into four blocks, within each of which we find a sequence of gods and

animals representing Creation, Destruction and Renovation, and which

can be shown to have existed both in India and Java, must have been

carried from the Old World to the New, since in Mexico we find

calendaric lists of gods and animals that follow each other without

interruption in the same order and with attributes and functions or

meanings strikingly similar to those of the 12 Indian and Javanese

groups of gods, showing the same four subdivisions."

 

E. B. Taylor also found the counterparts of the tortoise myth of

India in ancient America.

Donald A. Mackenzie and other scholars, however, are of definite

opinion that the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians were familiar with

Indian mythology and cite in support close parallels in details. For

instance, the history of the Mayan elephant symbol cannot be traced

in the local tradition, whereas it was a prominent religious symbol

in India. The African elephant has larger ears. It is the profile of

the Indian elephant, its tusk and lower lip, the form of its ear, as

well as its turbaned rider with his ankus, which is found in Meso-

American models. Whilst the African elephant was of little religious

significance, it had been tamed in India and associated with

religious practices since the early days.

 

The Mexican doctrine of the World's Ages - the universe was destroyed

four consecutive times - is reminiscent of the Indian Yugas. Even the

reputed colors of these mythical four ages, white, yellow, red and

black are identical with and in the same order as one of the two

versions of the Indian Yugas. In both myths the duration of the First

Age is exactly the same, 4,800 divine years. The Mexican Trinity is

associated with this doctrine as in the Hindu Trinity with the Yugas

in India.

 

Later, two English scholars Channing Arnold and Fredrick J.Tabor

Frost, in their The American Egypt, made a detailed examination of

the transpacific contacts, reinforcing the view of Buddhist

influences on Central America. The most recent and by far the most

systematic well-reasoned, and effective case has been advanced by the

eminent archaeologist, R. Heine-Geldern and Gordon Ekholm, who favor

Indian and Southeast Asian cultural influences on ancient America

through migration across the Pacific.

 

According to the Mayan calendar, which is extant, the time record of

the mayas began on 6 August 613 B.C. It is an exact date based upon

intricated astronomical calculations, and prolonged observations. To

work out this kind of elaborate calendar must have taken well over

two thousand years of studying stars, and the Asiomericans must have

been remarkably shrewd observers.

 

Use of Zero

 

The Mayas of Yucatan were the first people besides the Indians to use

a zero sign and represent number values by the position of basic

symbols. The similarity between the Indian zero and the Mayan zero is

indeed striking. So far as the logical principle is concerned, the

two are identical, but the expressions of the principle are

dissimilar. Again, whilst the Indian system of notation was decimal,

as was the European, the Mayan was vigesimal. Consequently, their 100

stood for 400, 1000 stood for 8000, 1234 for 8864. While the place of

zero in the respective systems of the Indians and Mayans is

different, the underlying principle and method are the same, and the

common origin of the Mayan and Indian zeros appears to be undoubted.

Disputes continue amongst scholars in the absence of conclusive

evidence. As chronological evidence stands today, the Mayan zero

appears to be anterior by several centuries to its Hindu counterpart.

 

Other similarities

 

In 1949, two scholars, Gordon Ekholm and Chaman Lal, systematically

compared the Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and the North American Indian

civilizations with the Hindu-oriented countries of Southeast Asia and

with India herself. According to them, the emigrant culutes of India

took with them India's system of time measurement, local gods, and

customs. Ekholm and Lal found signs of Aryan civilization throughout

the Americas in art (lotus flowers with knotted stems and half-

dragon/half fish motifs found commonly in paintings and carvings),

architecture, calendars, astronomy, religious symbols, and even games

such as our Parchessi and Mexican Patilli, which have their origins

in India's pachisi.

 

Both the Hindus and Americans used similar items in their worship

rituals. They both maintained the concept of four Yuga cycles, or

cosmological seasons, extending over thousands of years, and

concieved of twelve constellations with reference to the sun as

indicated by the Incan sun calendar. Royal insignias, systems of

government, and practice of religious dance and temple worship all

showed remarkable similarities, pointing strongly to the idea that

the Americas were strongly influenced by the Aryans. The theory is

found in the Vedic literature of India. The ancient Puranas

(literally, histories) and the Mahabharata make mention of the

Americas as lands rich with gold and silver. Argentina, which

means "related to silver", is thought to have been named after Arjuna

(of silver hue).

 

Another scholar, Ramon Mena, author of Mexican Archaelogy, called the

Nahuatl, Zapoteca, and mayan languages" of Hindu origin." He went to

say, "A deep mystery enfolds the tribes that inhabited the state of

chiapas in the district named Palenque....their writing, and the

anthropological type, as well as their personal adornments...their

system and style of construction clearly indicate the remotest

antiquity...(they) all speak of India and the Orient."

 

Still another scholar, Ambassador Miles Poindexter, a former

ambassador of the United States to Mexico, in his two-volume 1930s

treatise The Arya-Incas, called the Mayan

civilization "unquestionably Hindu." He proposed that primitive Aryan

words and people came to America by the island chains of Polynesia.

The Mexican name for boat is a South Indian Tamil word, Catamaran,

and Poindexter gives a long list of words of the Quichua languages

and their analogous forms in Sanskrit. Similarities between the hymns

of the Inca rulers of Peru and Vedic hymns have been pointed out. A.

L. Krober has also found striking similarities between the structure

of Indo-European and the Penutian language of some of the tribes

along the northwestern coast of California. Recently, an Indian

scholar, B. C. Chhabra,in his "Vestiges of Indian Culture in

Hawaii", has noticed certain resemblances between the symbols found

in the petroglyohs from the Hawaiian Islands and those on the

Harappan seals. Some of the symbols in the petroglyphs are described

as akin to early Brahmi script.

 

Indeed, the parallels between the arts and culture of India and those

of ancient America are too numerous and close to be attributed to

independent growth. A variety of art forms are common to Mexico,

India, Java, and Indochina, the most striking of which are the

Teocallis, the pyramids, with receding stages, faced with cut stone,

and with stairways leading to a stone sanctuary on top. Many share

surprisingly common features such as serpent columns and bannisters,

vaulted galleries and corbeled arches, attached columns, stone cut-

out lattices, and Atlantean figures; these are typical of the Puuc

style of Yucatan. Heine-Geldern and Ekholm point out that temple

pyramids in Cambodia did not become important until the ninth and

tenth centuries, a time coinciding with the beginning of the Puuc

period.